Bug in Handheld-Linux webshop solved

[Dr. H. Nikolaus Schaller]

Hi all,
if you have tried to use our Openmoko webshop in the last days with  
FireFox / IceWeasel / SeaMonkey, you may have experienced that the  
shopping cart was automatically deleted when trying to checkout. This  
effect did not happen with using e.g. Safari.

We have now found why, and that may be interesting for PHP script  
writers...

The reason was that a recent upgrade of libphp5.so and /usr/bin/php  
made the function date("d M Y") no longer display the current year but  
"0000". For scripts using this PHP function this would just look  
strange, but the main issue was that the expiration date of cookies  
sent to your browser is obviously derived from the same library  
function. So our shopping cart cookie was tagged with an expiration  
date "06-Oct-0000". Now it looks as if Safari simply ignores the  
expiration date (but stores the cookie) while FireFox discards the  
whole cookie - and the shopping cart contents were lost. Therefore, we  
hat different browser behaviour.

Now we have fixed this and everything is well again.

And thanks to one of our community members from Italy for pointing out  
to use IceWeasel (while we usually do tests with a Mac and Safari).

Nikolaus



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Mobile Office Solutions
by Golden Delicious Computers GmbH&Co. KG
Buchenstr. 3
D-82041 Oberhaching
+49-89-54290367
http://www.handheld-linux.com

AG München, HRA 89571
VAT DE253626266
Komplementär:
Golden Delicious Computers Verwaltungs GmbH
Oberhaching, AG München, HRB 16602
Geschäftsführer: Dr. Nikolaus Schaller

Digital Tools for Independent People
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